Dispatches from the Union

We’re not going to lie, things around here have been a little… slow. If you’re not familiar with the United Pixelworkers origin story or only stop by every so often, this might come as a surprise. After all, the store is stuffed to the gills with shirts and all manner of paraphernalia. Fortunately for you—and us—we don’t think that’s good enough.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed a little announcement we made on Friday. For the past three years, United Pixelworkers has been a side project of our web design shop, Full Stop Interactive. No more. From now on, we (Nate, Jay, and Matt) will be working exclusively on making United Pixelworkers (and its offspring, Cotton Bureau) as good as they can be. In the short-term, we’ll be focusing on sprucing things up around the site and pushing United Pixelworkers gear into uncharted territory (more on that later). You can also expect more frequent posts like this one. There’s really nothing we enjoy more than sharing what’s happening behind the scenes. The writing we have been able to do over the last few years had to be squeezed in between everything else that was going on. That’s going to change.

Over the next 12 months, we have three main priorities: better products, better content, and a better on-site experience. On the website side, you’ve already seen some evidence of our rejuvenation in the form of a faster (so fast it’s now usable) collection page. There’s a fair amount of refactoring that can and should happen under the hood. Plenty has changed on Shopify and in CSS best practices since we built the most recent version of the site a little over a year ago, so there’s no shortage of work to be done.

On the content side, aside from more writing about what’s happening behind the scenes, we’re going to be publishing new Origin Story podcast interviews. That’s one of the (many) initiatives we had to table while attending to clients, and it might have been the one that hurt the most. (In related news, we hoodwinked Paul Armstrong into bringing his horrible podcast under our umbrella, so if an hour is too much time to learn about someone, you can always spend five minutes finding out which designer he or she would most like to travel back in time to kill and replace in history.) Finally, as you probably noticed if you’ve been following on Twitter, we’re trying to use what little platform we have for good. If you’ve got something worth sharing, please let us know so we can send it around.

Comfortable, fine-looking t-shirts have always been our bread-and-butter, so a big part of the comeback will certainly revolve around new and better tees. (We’ll absolutely be re-stocking some old favorites, don’t worry. If you’ve been waiting for a particular shirt to come back in stock, be sure to sign up to be notified.) But we’re actively talking with partners about bringing more quality goods your way as well. If things break right, you might see some samples of what’s cooking very soon. Let’s just say it’s getting colder, and we’re exploring all our options for keeping you warm.

Big Picture

We are stuffed with ideas for what to do with United Pixelworkers going forward, but what we’d actually like to know more than anything else is: where do you want this to go? It’s not a coincidence the word in front of Pixelworkers is “United”. Please hit us up on Twitter, email us, or leave a comment below with your thoughts. As always, we read every tweet, email, and comment.

Thanks

Finally, If you stuck with us through all that, let us just take a moment to send out a massive thank-you for your patience, your moral support, and not infrequent deposits you’ve made into our little bank account. We’re exceedingly proud to be able to serve you. Dropping clients cold-turkey is not going to be a painless transition for us. We’re taking a big leap here, and we’re doing it because you’ve made us believe we’ll land safely. If you’d like to support us as we make a go of it, we’d be eternally grateful.

Step 1: Go buy something. We brought the Original Standard back just for the occasion with a reduced, one-time-only price of $25, but we’ve got lots of other great stuff too including the hats that we had to wait an eternity to get and as many track jackets as we need. (If you pre-ordered a jacket, hang in there. The labels are being attached as you read this.)

Step 2: Tell your friends. As much as we appreciate you picking up a t-shirt or a notebook or a patch, we like it even more when you say nice things about us to your friends. If you already helped us spread the word on Friday, take it easy, let someone else do the heavy lifting. All the rest of you layabouts get to work.

(One more thing. If you need help with Kickstarter t-shirt fulfillment, give us a holler. We’ve earned our stripes with the Retro Game Crunch and Thermodo campaigns [we're teaming up with Macaw too], and, hey, we’ve got more time on our hands these days.)

Here are some comments

Congratulations to you guys and I know you’ll be successful with whatever you choose to do. Your craftsmanship is evident in both the United Pixelworker work, as well as the Full Stop work you’ve done. Keep living the dream!

I’m excited you guys are going full time if only it means some of the stuff I’ve been waiting for to be in stock comes available! Wanted to do some black Friday shopping here but out of stock in many styles, many sizes… :(